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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> you must have a human expert able to intervene if something goes wrong

Similar things were said about cars. Humans make mistakes at certain rates, in predictable as well as novel situations. When the autopilot performs, on average, better, humans will become a safety liability.

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The autopilot has to outperform trained experts with hundreds of flight hours and an exceptionally high code of personal conduct.

Self driving cars have to outperform the average person who drives like a 100-year-old blind dog who’s texting while driving and drinking a smoothie. Also, their failure mode is easier and much less expensive.

It’s a difficult problem that we have not solved. But you said “must”. That’s a strict word to use for a problem that can be solved within a decade or two.

As someone who isn't afraid of flying (except in the case where the pilot has to suddenly drop the airplane due to turbulence) I still wouldn't trust a pilotless airplane until it's safer then with a pilot, which will be very difficult to prove. I feel also that I'm not alone and many people who fly would be extremely wary of a pilotless system. On the other hand, I would be much more likely to trust a self driving car. The main reason is that, if a self driving car malfunctions, the risk of my death is present but not absolutely guaranteed and with all of the safety features in a car it's likely I would still be alive after a crash, even at high speeds. A plane that has an autopilot malfunction, with no human present, without changes to the safety during a crash, would be essentially guaranteed to kill everyone on board. Until a plane can crash from the sky without killing all passengers in most scenarios, I wouldn't fly in a pilotless airplane.

Agreed, my primary gripe with the original comment was that the OP used the word “must.”

Airline passengers don't generally care about it being safer on average. If the autopilot can't make a landing in a 30 kt crosswind all of the time people won't fly on that plane. People have much higher standards for acceptable safety with aircraft than cars. Also, autopilot isn't really designed to replace the pilot. Its designed to reduce workloads during departure and approach and make cruise less shitty. Autopilots are entirely unable to handle even simple failures and even in many cases do simple things like climb at a specific airspeed or do wind drift corrections. Car are just much simpler, have fewer consequences, and have lower expectations of safety. Until we get more versatile autopilots, aircrew acceptance, and/or lower expectations of safety, I don't see self-flying airliners anytime soon.

Similar things were said about cars.

What an excellent counterexample, with all of the driverless cars that actually exist in real life.

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